Crypto hacks and chaos aren’t halting this holiday season

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If you’re feeling the holiday spirit this month, you probably align with millions of people out there spreading joy, love, warmth, maybe even some generosity.

But if you’re feeling like the Grinch, chances are you are aligning with a smaller party of individuals — one that (in this analogy) could include crypto hackers.

And even though it’s the season to feel jolly, that’s not stopping hackers from acting out. But hey, playing devil’s advocate, maybe the attackers are jolly every time someone falls for their scam. Two sides of the coin.

Earlier on Thursday, hackers compromised the code behind a crypto protocol used by multiple web3 applications and services, the crypto software and hardware wallet maker Ledger said on Thursday.

It’s not immediately clear how many people fell victim to the hack. ZachXBT, a well-known independent crypto researcher, wrote on X that one victim had more than $600,000 in crypto drained from their account.

Details below.

What’s happening in web3

1. Supply chain attack targeting Ledger crypto wallet leaves users hacked

2. Bitcoin ATM company Coin Cloud got hacked. Even its new owners don’t know how.

3. Worldcoin adds integrations with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Mercado Libre

4. Deadmau5-founded startup Korus taps into AI for music creation

The latest pod

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of crypto at Robinhood.

Johann is leading the application’s effort to expand its crypto exchange business and make digital assets more accessible to retail investors.

Before joining Robinhood, Johann was an engineer at Airbnb and was the head of engineering at Uber and VP of engineering at Iron Fish, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency startup.

We discussed Robinhood’s expansion outside of the U.S., how the platform restricted holding and trading of certain crypto assets in June and where it stands today.

Story continues

We also talked about:

• Appealing to mainstream audiences

• Growing crypto on its platform

• Regulatory concerns

• Robinhood’s 2024 objectives

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

1. Line Next secures $140 million funding for its web3 platform

2. Lolli raises $8 million Series B to expand its bitcoin and cashback rewards to enterprises

3. Andalusia Labs raises $48 million Series A to improve digital asset risk infrastructure

4. Dynamic raises $13.5 million from a16z crypto and Founders Fund to simply access to web3 and crypto wallets

5. Avalanche-based Nodekit raised $1.2 million in pre-seed round to create a network focused on rollups

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

What else we’re writing

Want to branch out from the world of web3? Here are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our attention this week.

1. Temu’s latest lawsuit against Shein is wild (TC+)

2. OpenAI thinks superhuman AI is coming — and wants to build tools to control it

3. AI isn’t and won’t soon be evil or even smart, but it’s also irreversibly pervasive

4. Here’s where founders screw up their pitch decks most often (TC+)

5. The possibility of regulation hangs on the horizon over generative AI (TC+)

Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto news, memes and more.